Log in

User Name

Password

Remember Me?

Lost Password Recovery Form

If you have forgotten your username or password, you can request to have your username emailed to you and to reset your password. When you fill in your registered email address, you will be sent instructions on how to reset your password.

Character Concept Artists' Payment [QUESTION]

Hey there people,

I would like to introduce myself first. My name's George, I'm an all around games developer (design, art, code). Me and my team have been developing a game since last year. Pretty much design/code-wise the mechanics have been finished and we've been working on other elements of the gameplay, such as AI, Level/Maps, Multiplayer and more.

One of our current targets is to start working on the original visuals of the game as well, but before we dive into this, we'd like to know a bit more about this specific field. More specifically, we are looking for a Concept Artist (Characters mainly) since it is one of the few skills that we do not posses.

So, we would love to know how much would a junior concept artist charge us for a game character? What is the average payment? How much time does it usually take? What more do we need to know before we hire one? I have attached on the bottom of the thread a few random pieces that we found from the internet. This is the level of quality we would like to achieve or at least something less than it if the budget does not allow it.

I would like to point out that we do not have any funding. I am saving a large amount of my job's income so that we can afford one artist. I'm even looking for a second job and that money will go directly to the development of our Project.

Hmm, I think the first thing is that you're not going to find a freelancer calling themselves "junior concept artist", thats more of a studio term and those guys usually dont get to design characters. It's more grunt work, from what I've heard. The second thing is that the price is going to be dependant on the specifics of the job, what do you actually need? Thumbnails? A single image showing the design? Model sheets? How complex is the design? How quickly do you need it done? I mean you can't expect a turn around of a stick figure to cost the same as a warhammer style character for example.

Ok, So lets say that what you want is a warhammer style design at the quality of the first image and you need thumbnails, model sheets/turn arounds fully rendered in color plus revisions, and you need this done by next week... I can't tell you what other people would charge for this, but I wouldnt look at it for less than $300. You're not going to find a "junior concept artist" that could pull it off either. If you checked out the freelancing sites such as Freelancer.com or Guru.com you could probably get offers for this for a lot less but those guys will not be able to match the quality you need.

If your requirements are less than the above then maybe you can get it cheaper. I think if you only need the work to model off, then you could get away with asking for only line work with basic values, which would lower the cost by quite a bit.

Anyway these are just my thoughts on it, I'm not an expert and pricing this stuff in terms of a one time payment is difficult. Hope this is some help to you.

"The whole point of practice is to do it until you can do it right." - dpaintDASketch Book